For those of you that haven’t been following along, the Brawler’s Guild is a new feature being introduced to World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria in patch 5.1. This new part of the World of Warcraft has generated a lot of excitement--not to mention a few questions--so we’re going to try to provide a clearer picture of what we’re hoping to accomplish with the Brawler’s Guild in this thread.

First, a little bit about what it is, and what it isn’t:

What Brawler’s Guild Is

A fun, but small diversion that could grow in time

A venue for a realm’s community to come together

A unique way to earn some solo PvE bragging rights

A cool place to hang out

What Brawler’s Guild Isn’t

A means of solo progression

A major patch feature accessible to everyone (at first)

A way to earn lots of in-game rewards

Proving Grounds where you can develop class skills (that’s a different feature arriving later on)

So, to sum up, we’re trying to give the Brawler’s Guild a tight knit, underground kind of feel, and we expect the Guild on each realm to slowly grow to encompass more and more of the population over time. Because invites will be so limited, it’s likely that a lot of the players that join the Brawler’s Guild will have had some kind of interaction with one or more existing members before they ever step into the ring. Finally, a smaller population will help keep the queues low for quite a while – since a big part of the Brawler’s Guild is watching other players fight their own battles, right now instancing arenas or using phasing isn’t an attractive option.

About Those Invites
Invites to the Guild will (at least initially) only be available for purchase on the Black Market Auction House. We’ve taken this approach both to control queue times, and also because the Brawler’s Guild is meant to be kind of a small, underground thing, and a way for players on a realm to come together. At first, that will happen because invites will go out from one player to another based on who buys those initial Black Market invites. After reaching a certain rank in the Brawler’s Guild, each of the new members can eventually earn one new invitation of their own to pass out to someone else on the same realm, so the Brawler’s Guilds on each realm should get progressively larger and larger over time. We may also investigate alternate methods of acquiring invitations or making them more plentiful.

World First?
We’ve also decided that attaching a realm first style achievement to the Brawler’s Guild isn’t necessarily the right move. Rest assured that there will be other achievements to earn in the ring though.

We know you’ve got questions, so ask away, and we’ll try to clarify where things are hazy.

Heart of Fear Heroic Progression UpdateManaflask has been keeping track of progression in Heart of Fear, or lack thereof, on Imperial Vizier Zor'lok. Arctìca (EU-Chromaggus) decided to skip that boss and killed Blade Lord Ta'yak for World First 10 Man. Congratulations to them!

Heroic Imperial Vizier Zor'lok Hotfixes

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The Heroic Zor'lok encounter is currently more difficult than intended. While we prefer to avoid changes to encounters in the midst of progression, we would like to fix a few quality of life issues and make some targeted balance changes that do not invalidate the efforts that guilds have put into learning the encounter so far. Later today a hotfix will make the following adjustments:

Zor'lok's Echoes will pause briefly before beginning to cast Song of the Empress.

Zor'lok's berserk timer has been increased slightly.

Zor'lok will no longer summon Echoes of Force and Verve during the final phase of the encounter.

I am not a paragon fanboy, but I really don't think this guild would have gotten their World First kills without skipping the first boss and it is kind of cheap that they are. They know the guilds that would have beat them to it aren't going to skip bosses and are taking advantage. That is all there really is to it.

@MMOChamp Staff. Can we please stop proclaiming 10 man as World First? I would be pleased if you would say 10-Man World First as a bolded/hyperlink rather than just World First. By giving coverage to these types of kills, and not differentiating, you are assisting in the decline of the already acknowledged unrewarded 25-Man groups. Please either tag them appropriately, or don't post about 10 man progression at all.

I concur..what a dumb idea.
Their goal was to make a place where people fight bosses in front of other people, so they decide to do everything they can to make sure people have to jump over hurdles to get into it and then once they get into it the people have to sit in long ques so they are mad at the people ahead of them.

I mean at least it's a choice and isn't required, but kinda makes it seem more of a reason why it is a waste of development time.

---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 06:07 PM ----------

Originally Posted by tehdef

@MMOChamp Staff. Can we please stop proclaiming 10 man as World First? I would be pleased if you would say 10-Man World First as a bolded/hyperlink rather than just World First. By giving coverage to these types of kills, and not differentiating, you are assisting in the decline of the already acknowledged unrewarded 25-Man groups. Please either tag them appropriately, or don't post about 10 man progression at all.

Since there is a higher level of difficulty involved in running a 25 man group including but not limited to organization and strategy, I agree these two should be completely separate in the determination of who gets kills first. One would think it'd be obvious not to lump two different modes together.

@MMOChamp Staff. Can we please stop proclaiming 10 man as World First? I would be pleased if you would say 10-Man World First as a bolded/hyperlink rather than just World First. By giving coverage to these types of kills, and not differentiating, you are assisting in the decline of the already acknowledged unrewarded 25-Man groups. Please either tag them appropriately, or don't post about 10 man progression at all.

LOL....

By ignoring coverage to these types of kills, and differentiating, you are assisting in the promotion of of the already acknowledged logistically strenuous 25-Man groups. Please either deal with it, and don't worry about 10 man progression at all if its really that useless to you.

I really don't think this guild would have gotten their World First kills without skipping the first boss and it is kind of cheap that they are. They know the guilds that would have beat them to it aren't going to skip bosses and are taking advantage. That is all there really is to it.

Obviously. One team makes a smart decision, gets some kills, and now its cheap, aye? Order was never important, aka T11; moreover, last boss matters most. So still some time for the race to conclude. (so Shekzeer hc and Sha of Fear Hc still waiting)

seems some paragon butt kissers are getting pissed yet again when another guild gets world first.

Also anyone else think the advertising for this brawlers guild thing is a fucking joke....'small' 'underground'......lol seriously.
Bout time they stopped ripping ideas from other sources and using the same references ie 'first rule about brawlers guild is we dont talk bla bla bla' bullshit, blizzard creativity is fucking none existent.

---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 11:28 PM ----------

Originally Posted by tehdef

@MMOChamp Staff. Can we please stop proclaiming 10 man as World First? I would be pleased if you would say 10-Man World First as a bolded/hyperlink rather than just World First. By giving coverage to these types of kills, and not differentiating, you are assisting in the decline of the already acknowledged unrewarded 25-Man groups. Please either tag them appropriately, or don't post about 10 man progression at all.

@tehdef . How about shutting the fuck up? Every guild that gets a world first deserves a front page news not just the guild you seem to want to ass kiss on a regular basis.

I agree. The limiting the number of people who can access it at the start is an instant turnoff for me. I can understand delaying raid availability, but if BG is meant as solo content then who cares if tons of people are there at the start? We want to see it without having to outbid someone on the BMAH(GL with that on some servers). Blizzard's response to that issue....allowing people who are in BG to invite people in. I can't wait to see how well that works out. Please implement that Blizzard. I want to see the general forums of wow fill up with "The people in BG aren't inviting other in" threads.

"We’ve also decided that attaching a realm first style achievement to the Brawler’s Guild isn’t necessarily the right move. Rest assured that there will be other achievements to earn in the ring though."

wtf but for all Pandaria factions Exalted there was an "unfair" Achievment. how do you shall get this without beeing a human? This logic....

Blizzard, you require people to buy the first Brawler's Guild invites off of the Auction House. A good amount of the players with a ton of guild, most likely buying the first invites will be gold farmers/buyers, meaning they don't need to have any skill. You mentioned having to complete a certain amount of fights to be able to invite a new person the the guild. What if one a certain server all of the players that bought the initial invites weren't skilled enough to get to that point. You'd have however many players stuck there, and no one else on the server would have access to it.

@MMOChamp Staff. Can we please stop proclaiming 10 man as World First? I would be pleased if you would say 10-Man World First as a bolded/hyperlink rather than just World First. By giving coverage to these types of kills, and not differentiating, you are assisting in the decline of the already acknowledged unrewarded 25-Man groups. Please either tag them appropriately, or don't post about 10 man progression at all.

10 man's are just as relevant as 25 man. 10's at least require a lot more personal responsibility.

Why would something with limited access require a queue? Especially if it's intended to be a spectator event. And you're right, I won't be doing it because I wouldn't waste my gold on something so stupid. That you would says a lot about you.

Amen. Mark my words, this is going to be one of the things the Blizzard collective will look back at some time in the near future and go "Urg...Why did we let them waste time and resources on that again...?".

I'd like to think the tidal wave of negative responses might prompt an outbreak of common sense on the issue though the current developers have proven to be famously resistant to such concepts so far. Putting exclusionary content in an MMO is just a terrible idea from start to finish.

Since there is a higher level of difficulty involved in running a 25 man group including but not limited to organization and strategy

Plain wrong. If that was actually true the first two page of wow progress should be R10 guilds. And actually it isn't. You could always argue that "skilled guild" only play 10 but that would be super silly.

The only difference between 10 and 25 is that there is more people in a same room in the second format (and of course slight difference in difficulty some boss are easier in 10 some other easier in 25).